


Chapter 2: Heart In A Cage

by distantlight



Series: Albus & Scorpius: Life Is Simple In The Moonlight [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child - Thorne & Rowling
Genre: F/M, Forbidden Forest, LGBT, M/M, Scorbus, kiss, queer, romantic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-31
Updated: 2016-08-31
Packaged: 2018-08-12 05:09:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,538
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7921729
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/distantlight/pseuds/distantlight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Albus receives his punishment from Professor McGonagall. Scorpius invites him to the Forbidden Forest for an evening of blue flames, purple wines and repressed passions.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Chapter 2: Heart In A Cage

Albus trudged dolefully down dark corridor after dark corridor, struggling to keep up with Professor McGonagall.

“Hurry up Potter!” she barked in a thick Scottish accent, “I haven’t got all afternoon.”

Albus was caught off guard by the misery he felt, the churning in his stomach at the thought he might be expelled. He had always treated life at the school with a sort of offhand disdain, giving the impression of someone who was miserably living out time until he was old enough to leave. Now that he was faced with the prospect of leaving forever, he had to admit that he cared more about Hogwarts than he had been able to admit even to himself.

He didn’t like it at the school, true, but he couldn’t bear it anywhere else. Especially at home, when he felt alienated from his parents and envious of his siblings. Here he had Scorpius, the only person who seemed to bring him out of himself, who didn’t seem to care about his limited magical abilities or awkward personality.

Soon enough, they reached the office of the headmistress, austerely decorated with only a dark oak writing desk and a smattering of magical objects resting on cabinets. Albus Dumbledore smiled at him with twinkling eyes from one of the portraits on the wall. Albus sat down and prepared to face his fate, feeling like he wanted to cry.

“You leave me in a very difficult position, Potter,” said McGonagall. “Injuring a teacher...most serious.”

“It was sort of an accident, Professor,” said Albus, biting his lip. “I didn’t mean to hurt Professor Constantine. He just sort of got caught in the firing line.”

“Nevertheless, the behaviour was reckless in the extreme. In normal circumstances you should be punished severely. On the other hand...well...I was very fond of your father...he did express concerns...is something troubling you? Are you struggling with the fourth year curriculum?”

“No, it isn’t that,” replied Albus. How could he explain the unexplainable melancholy he felt? How could he explain that overwhelming sense of apathy and hopelessness towards the world? That sadness which seemed to have no tangible cause, and seemed as natural as the dull, rainy clouds that had populated the autumnal skies near the castle lately. Scorpius understood – he shared the same sickness, though was better at hiding it- but trying to explain depression to a brisk, forthright adult like McGonagall would be like trying to explain a smart-phone to Arthur Weasley.

“Perhaps you have been spending too much time with that boy, Scorpius Malfoy,” she continued. “The two of you appear to be inseparable.”

“Being friends with Scorpius isn’t what is making me ill," protested Albus. "It’s making me better, if anything.”

“Hmm,” said McGonagall doubtfully. “Interesting family the Malfoy’s...don’t like to criticize a student... A wide range of friends should be part of the Hogwarts experience. You should have friends from all houses and backgrounds. Try and diversify. In the meantime, I must decide your punishment. Your father and the debt that this school owes him has granted you a certain clemency, so I will be lenient in this instance.”

“I’m not going to be expelled?”

“Not this time. You will have detention tonight at 8PM, assisting the caretaker Mr Watt in preparing the Quidditch pitch for the big match between Slytherin and Griffindor at the weekend. You will be cutting the grass on the pitch – by hand. I have procured an artefact known as a ‘Lawn Mower’ from the Muggle Studies department for the task. You will push this object around the pitch until Mr Watt is satisfied that the grass is looking satisfactory. No magic will be allowed.”

Albus snorted in his head – he couldn’t cut grass by magic if he had the entire night to attempt it. He must be the only fourth year in the school for whom it was quicker to mow a lawn by pushing a blade manually around the pitch than with his wand. He sighed at this realisation.

“Don’t sigh at me, Potter. You have gotten off lightly by all accounts. I also want you to spend some time working on potions with young Paris Black – he is falling behind, and not just on his education. He is becoming more immature and mischievous by the day – used to be such a sweet boy during his first year. You will be mentoring him. I believe it will be good for both of you. You are dismissed.”

Albus thought he would rather be landed with more Muggle gardening than spend time working on potions with Paris Black. The boy was in his second year, and his loud chirpy voice and excitable laugh could be heard echoing around the corridors at every hour of the day. Albus, who preferred silence and stillness to boisterousness, found him extremely irritating.

Worse, Paris seemed to believe that since his grandfather Sirius Black had been best friends with Albus’ grandfather James Potter, this inseparable friendship should continue into the current generation. Out of resigned politeness and at the insistence of his father Albus was forced to tolerate this delusion without complaint and make stilted conversation while Paris buzzed around him on the way to lessons.

Paris kept cornering him in the library and wildly suggesting they should start a modern day Order Of The Phoenix, with Albus as the leader of dozens of recruits, going on swashbuckling adventures to vanquish the dark wizards of the age. Albus couldn’t think of anything worse than being surrounded by that many people – and he found it an effort walking to the other side of the castle for a lesson, let alone traversing the world trying to track down evil characters.

\--

Albus wandered back through the labyrinth of passageways and staircases that led back to the Slytherin quarters. Although it was only mid October, a chill had already descended on the castle and he was forced to toast his hands by the fire when he returned to the still deserted common room. 

Scorpius was the sole occupant, asleep in an armchair, the flickering flames illuminating his pale, flawless features. Even while asleep he looked exhausted, with huge black rings under his eyes and the general look of someone who needed fresh air and a satisfying meal. 

Albus gazed at him for several minutes, and fought the urge to kiss him on the forehead. Every time he had seen or spoken to Scorpius in the last month he had had the weird, almost uncontrollable desire to lunge towards his lips. They would be deep in conversation, and Albus would have to force all his concentration on not grabbing him in a passionate embrace. It was almost as if he had been confounded with some sort of love charm over the summer break, or at least Albus tried to think that this was the cause...the alternative was that he was tumbling into love with his closest friend, and as a natural pessimist Albus was sure that couldn’t end well. 

Conscious that lessons were to finish soon and hordes of chattering Slytherin’s would be filling the common room, Albus sloped upstairs to his dormitory and tried to sleep, setting his Chudley Cannons alarm clock for 7.45PM so he didn’t miss the detention.

\--

The detention was more enjoyable than expected. Although he had been shivering and resentful at the start, standing in the cold autumnal air with his teeth chattering, Albus soon got into the rhythm of his task and got a strange satisfaction out of the manual work, especially when he surveyed how neat and stylish the grass looked when he had finished. By the end he was sweating and had to remove his cloak as he sat alone by the side of the pitch, trying to clean the blades of the lawn mower with a wet cloth.  
Suddenly he heard a whooshing noise and a slim, athletic figure speeding towards him on a broom, blond hair almost glowing white under the floodlights on the Quidditch Stadium.

“Finally found a use for you, have they,” grinned Scorpius. He surveyed the pitch: “I think you’ve missed a bit.”

“You know what won’t miss a bit?” replied Albus, “The stunning spell I’ll be firing at you if you don’t shut up.”

“I wouldn’t bank on that – I saw you attempt one in Defence Against The Dark Arts the other week. Have they managed to get that carriage clock working again after you left it in splinters?”

“Don’t know, don’t care,” said Albus.

“How did it go with McGonagall, then? Have they chucked you out and made you Gamekeeper, just like Hagrid? Is that what these weird tools are for?”

“No, they let me off. Just detention. Something to do with what a wonderful bloke my father was apparently and the debt we all owe him.”

“Special treatment, is it, for the son of the chosen one? Not likely to get that with my father. Discrimination if you ask me – not my fault Draco was a crazed pureblood fanatic and overall plonker in his youth is it? To be fair, I suppose someone like you needs to be given some special perks to compensate for your looks,” said Scorpius with a wicked smile.

Albus didn’t seem impressed by his special treatment – he often wondered how he would ever live up to his brother, let alone his father, and it was somewhat humiliating to escape punishment through Harry’s virtues rather than his own.

“What are you doing down here, anyway?” asked Albus.

“Quidditch practise. Top secret, so we did it near the lake rather than up here where Griffindor spies might have seen us. Was flying back to the castle when I spotted a familiar looking miserable figure slouching around the grounds. Come on, I’ll cheer you up – let’s go to the forest.”

\--

Albus and Scorpius had spent much of their third year designing and building a hideout in the Forbidden Forest. Under the cover of an invisibility cloak, they had regularly sneaked out of the castle in the dead of night and surreptitiously created a clearing in the woods. Here, they built by a small wooden hideaway by a combination of magic and hard work, a hidden place where they could escape the bustle of the castle.

Scorpius had found a book on dark magic in the attic of Malfoy Manor, and much time and concentration had been spent learning complex spells which repelled teachers, students and even the gamekeeper Hagrid. The spells had created an impenetrable ring around the small clearing, and thickets of dark, evergreen trees had been created to hide the wooden cabin from anyone who did manage to get close. The place was only accessible by tapping a bewitched conifer tree with wither Scorpius or Albus’ wand and whispering the words amicus meus.

Albus conjured some warming blue flames, a trick he had learned from his Auntie Hermione, and they sat side by side on the comfy floor of the cabin listening to music from a crackly wizard wireless getting slowly drunk on a collection of Albanian Purple Wine which Scorpius had stolen from his father’s cellar.

“I’m going away in the morning for a couple of days,” said Scorpius suddenly, eyes half closed from the heaviness of the alcohol. “I’ll be back in time for the Quidditch match at the weekend.”

“Going away where? What for?” slurred Albus.

“Just back home for a couple of days. I’m taking a Portkey from Hogsmeade. Going to recharge my batteries, catch up with my father, sleep in my own bed, that sort of thing.”  
Even in his tipsy, slightly bemused state Albus knew this was a lie. Scorpius often complained about the springiness of his bed at home, and avoided spending time with Draco at all costs. Still, he decided not to raise the point and risk ruining the evening.

“I’ll miss you,” he said in a low voice.

“Who wouldn’t,” smiled Scorpius. “Come here.”

Scorpius pulled him close in a hug, and Albus rested his head on his chest and closed his eyes, blissfully glowing from the flames on one side and Scorpius’ warm, beating chest on the other. Scorpius stroked Albus’ jagged jet black hair and smooth face with his impossibly soft hand, and they rested like this for almost half an hour, until Albus eventually realised that Scorpius had nodded off himself and that it was almost 2AM.

“Come on, time to get up,” said Albus softly, shaking Scorpius gently by his cloak. 

Scorpius half opened his eyes and smiled sleepily. And just then, Albus finally gave into temptation and moved his quivering mouth slowly towards that of his friend. Scorpius gave a murmur of assent, dulled by the wine and the half light, and leaned upwards to meet him, enjoying the sensation of Albus’ lush, full lips against his own, running his hands through the hair of his friend as they slowly caressed their mouths against one and other.

Albus could feel his heart pounding within his chest, butterflies in his stomach and the unmistakable sensation of his cock hardening beneath his robes. As their tongues swirled around, Albus drank in Scorpius’ peppermint breath and grasped his head in his hands, kissing with more passion and ferocity.

Scorpius eventually pulled away and collapsed to the floor with laughter.

“Man, I can’t believe that just happened,” he said, rolling around in a fit of giggles.

Albus smiled weakly, trying to hide his hurt that his friend was treating one of the most beautiful moments of his life as a kind of joke. 

\---

“Albus,” whispered Scorpius, as they walked back to the castle under the cloak. “Don’t tell anyone about what happened just now, will you. Let’s keep it between ourselves.”

“Ashamed of me, are you?” said Albus.

“You know I am,” Scorpius replied, sticking his tongue out. “No, it’s not that. It’s just, well...I’m not gay...and I know you’re not gay...and we don’t want people jumping to conclusions, just because we had a few drinks and messed around.”

Albus jerked his head in a kind of nod and they carried on walking.

Scorpius stopped him again just before they entered their dormitory

“Seriously though, it would be better if tonight stayed between the two of us. You don’t want to get a reputation for...that sort of thing. We'd never hear the end of it. We would be abused and laughed at everywhere we went. I know that is just a natural day for you of course, but for me...” He said this last sentence with his usual mischievous smile, but Albus wasn’t laughing.

“Right, whatever you say,” said Albus sullenly.

“I just don’t want to ruin my chances with Rose Weasley, that’s all. I’m thinking of asking her to the Yule Ball.” 

Albus felt his fists clench at this last sentence, felt a wave of jealousy flow over him that he had not felt before.

“You ruined your chances with Rose Weasley when your bastard of a father became a death eater and tried to kill her family,” he spat, and stalked off to bed, leaving Scorpius sat on the stairs staring miserably into space, drinking iced water to sober up.

**Author's Note:**

> Part 2 of the [Albus & Scorpius: Life Is Simple In The Moonlight](http://archiveofourown.org/series/539242) series.


End file.
